According to Apple, Google Now Violates Siri

We already knew that Google Now violates Siri insofar as it's much better. But according to a new lawsuit filed by Apple a.ka. the Patentmaster in Chief, Google Now violates Apple's intellectual property by being a bit too much like Siri.

The patent that Google Now allegedly infringes is one Apple's wheeled out before: the deliciously vague patent for a "universal interface for retrieval of information in a computer system". It was originally used in one of Apple's ten billion filings against some Android-powered device or other, to claim that the Android Quick Search box infringed.

That motion was overruled on appeal (for long technical reasons that seem to revolve around Siri being a bit crap), but Apple's having another go, this time in an amendment to a previous filing, which is being updated to reflect the launch of the S4. Google Now is singled out, as are a couple of other features, like a "graphical user interface using historical lists with field classes" and "asynchronous data synchronisation amongst devices".